The Wright Imperial

Twenty to twenty-five years ago when I used to come to Tokyo a lot on business I would occasionally stay at the Imperial Hotel across from Hibiya Park in the center of Tokyo. The Imperial is the grand old hotel of Tokyo having been founded in 1888. It is now in its third reincarnation and proof that looks don't always get better with each new birth. Not that today's Imperial is ugly - it's not. But how can one compare it to the absolutely gorgeous second reincarnation overseen by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1923?

The "Wright Imperial" , commissioned in 1916, was designed to symbolize Japan’s relation to the West. Wright designed the building as a hybrid of Japanese and Western architecture. The Wright version of the Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1968. The entrance lobby was saved and reconstructed at the Meiji Mura architecture museum in Nagoya. When I first saw the reconstructed version at the museum some 15 or so years ago I was stunned. I hadn't even known about the previous versions of the Imperial. When I compared the reconstructed lobby with the modern one I was familiar with I felt a deep sense of loss. How I wished I could have stayed in the Wright Imperial. The lobby of today's Imperial has been compared to a train station lobby, a dark one at that.

Today, I wandered back through the Imperial for old times sake and was glad to find an exhibition on the Wright Imperial, including a reconstructed column that gives a hint of the beauty of Wright's vision.